Thursday, May 22, 2014

As with black race-card hustlers -- say the Revs. Jesse
Jackson, Al Sharpton or any given host on MSNB-Hee-Haw -- white race-card
players label others "racist" for the crime of disagreement. As with black
race-card hustlers, white race-card hustlers need not name names when accusing
someone of "racism." And, as with black race-card hustlers, the mainscream
media will not bother to ask the white race-card hustler to identify said racists.

And, much later:

The next time a Democrat or member of media speaks darkly about
these anonymous Republican "racists," ask this question: Don't [Steve] Israel
and [Jay] Rockefeller, currently in office, have a duty to "out" these racists?
Why allow known bigots to remain in government? Doesn't morality require [Charlie] Crist, running as a Democrat for his
old job as governor of Florida, to identify and help remove these racist
elected officials? Aren't these Republican "racists" -- whose IDs are
being protected by their Democratic colleagues -- detrimental to the
interests of the nation and serving in violation of their oath to protect and
defend the U.S. Constitution? Doesn't this oath mean protecting and defending
the rights of all constituents irrespective of race
-- and exposing the "racists" who refuse to do so?

Why protect
them? Why conceal their identities? Out the SOBs!

As to the motives, Elder is plainly arguing that the Democrats are mis-using
the term purposefully as what novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand called a
smear against Republicans. This is nothing new, coming from the left, as Rand demonstrated
in a 1964 essay titled, "'Extremism,' or the Art of Smearing" (which is
reprrinted in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal):

A large-scale
instance, in the 1930's, was the introduction of the world "isolationism" into
our political vocabulary. It was a derogatory term, suggesting something evil,
and it had no clear, explicit definition. It was used to convey two meanings:
one alleged, the other real--and to damn both.

The alleged
meaning was defined approximately like this: "Isolationism is the attitude of a
person who is interested only in his own country and is not concerned with the
rest of the world." The real meaning was: "Patriotism and national
self-interest."

...

In the late 1940's, another newly
coined term was shot into our cultural arteries: "McCarthyism." Again, it was a
derogatory term, suggesting some insidious evil, and without any clear
definition. Its alleged meaning was: "Unjust accusations, persecutions, and
character assassinations of innocent victims." Its real meaning was:
"Anti-communism."

Senator McCarthy was never proved guilty of those
allegations, but the effect of that term was to intimidate and silence public
discussions. Any uncompromising denunciation of communism or communists
was--and still is--smeared as "McCarthyism." As a consequence,
opposition to and exposes of communist penetration have all but vanished from
our intellectual scene. (I must mention that I am not an admirer of Senator
McCarthy, but not for the reasons implied in that smear.)

Now
consider the term "extremism." Its alleged meaning is: "Intolerance, hatred,
racism, bigotry, crackpot theories, incitement to violence." Its real meaning
is: "The advocacy of capitalism."

It is interesting to observe that
all three of the above smear campaigns involved the creation of new terms
with nebulous meanings (Rand called them "anti-concepts") whereas this is a
somewhat less sophisticated attempt to insinuate that an entire political party
is evil by misusing a legitimate term. It is also interesting to contemplate what
Rand said about the last of the three terms:

The best proof of an
intellectual movement's collapse is the day when it has nothing to offer as an
ultimate ideal but a plea for "moderation." Such is the final proof of
collectivism's bankruptcy. The vision, the courage, the dedication, the moral
fire are now on the barely awakening side of the crusaders for
capitalism.

As the collapse of the left goes on, its rhetoric has
degenerated even further into a mindless, cowardly substitute for outright
name-calling.